WilmerHale has become the latest Big Law firm to be the subject of an executive order, as President Donald Trump continues to target law firms he maintains have supported efforts to unfairly prosecute him or help his opponents.
The order against WilmerHale, signed on Thursday (27 March), cited the firm’s hire of Robert Mueller after he investigated Russian contacts with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign while US special counsel, which it described as “one of the most partisan investigations in American history”. Mueller retired from the firm in 2021.
The order also accused WilmerHale of doing pro bono work to support “destructive” causes related to voting and immigration, and said it discriminated against its own employees based on race.
It is similar to the orders Trump earlier issued to Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss and Jenner & Block, suspending their lawyers’ security clearances, restricting their access to government buildings and threatening the firms and their clients with the loss of their government contracts.
Perkins Coie is suing the administration over the order and won a temporary restraining order blocking it. WilmerHale and Jenner & Block also filed separate suits in a federal court in Washington DC this morning (28 March) challenging the executive orders against them.
In a statement WilmerHale said the order targeting it was “a plainly unlawful attack on the bedrock principles of our nation’s legal system – our clients’ right to counsel and the First Amendment”.
It added the terms of a “nearly identical executive order” had already been enjoined by a federal judge and that it had filed the lawsuit today “for immediate relief to protect the rights of our clients”.
Trump’s order against WilmerHale declared that many law firms “take actions that threaten public safety and national security, limit constitutional freedoms, degrade the quality of American elections, or undermine bedrock American principles”. It added that firms often “conduct this harmful activity through their powerful pro bono practices”.
Lawyers and law firms that “engage in such egregious conduct should not have access to our nation’s secrets, nor should such conduct be subsidised by federal taxpayer funds or contracts”.
WilmerHale, the executive order stated, had “abused its pro bono practice to engage in activities that undermine justice and the interests of the United States”, including by engaging in “obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends”.
So far five major US firms have been targeted by Trump through executive orders, with Covington & Burling the subject of a narrower order in February that suspended security clearances for its lawyers advising former special counsel Jack Smith, who unsuccessfully prosecuted Donald Trump on behalf of the Justice Department under the Biden administration.
Covington, Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale are also acting for clients in lawsuits against the Trump administration over issues such as transgender rights and immigration. For its part WilmerHale is representing a group of inspectors general who claim the administration illegally fired them.
The crackdown appears to be widening, with Trump directing US attorney general Pam Bondi last week to review the “conduct” of lawyers and law firms that have brought litigation against the federal government over the last eight years.
Paul Weiss struck a deal with the Trump administration earlier this month to escape the order targeting it. The move drew criticism from the legal community, including from Marc Elias, a former Perkins Coie partner, who wrote on social media the agreement was “a stain on the firm, every one of its partners and the entire legal profession”.
In a letter to his firm’s lawyers and staff defending the decision, Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp said the order “could easily have destroyed our firm”.
Frustrated by the lack of public opposition from leadership, associates from dozens of major US firms have signed an open letter criticising the administration for its attempts to “bully corporate law firms out of engaging in any representation that challenges the administration’s aims” and calling on their bosses to do the same. More than 1,670 associates have anonymously signed the letter since it was published earlier this month.
Last week, Rachel Cohen, a Chicago-based associate at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom who helped coordinate the open letter, gave her conditional notice to the firm citing law firms’ collective failure to challenge Trump’s attacks on the profession.
The American Bar Association (ABA) has also issued statements condemning criticism of judges by administration officials and accusing Trump of punishing law firms because of who they represent.
And last week, 18 national and international professional bodies, including the Commonwealth Lawyers Association and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, issued a joint statement condemning “the recent targeting of legal professionals by the US government”.
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